ENGELYN S.

BANSUELO

CONTEMPORARY WORLD
BSOA-1A MRS. GALLEGO

THE BIGGEST PROBLEMS /ISSUES FACING THE WORLD TODAY

PANDEMIC
What is Pandemic?
is an epidemic of infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple  
continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals? A widespread endemic
disease with a stable number of infected individuals is not a pandemic. Widespread endemic
diseases with a stable number of infected individuals such as recurrences of seasonal
influenza are generally excluded as they occur simultaneously in large regions of the globe
rather than being spread worldwide.

The Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) Health Sector immediately responded to the
threat of a growing outbreak, as soon as it received the report from China, in early January, of
unexplained pneumonia clusters in Wuhan. Existing national and regional mechanisms were activated
to detect, prevent, and respond to the new coronavirus disease. ASEAN, as a regional body, stepped
up national responses and regional cooperation, complementing the World Health Organization (WHO)
declaration of a COVID-19 pandemic on 11 March. including other nations with weaker health systems
are among the hardest hit by COVID-19.
All ASEAN Member States are feeling the socio-economic impact of the Covid-19. In the early
stages of the pandemic, the rapid spread of the virus in China led to the disruption of supply
chains and freezing demand limiting the flows of travel, trade, and investment. As the rate of
infection rose in Southeast Asia, the impact of the pandemic brought immediate interruption in
all sectors of the economic activity, primarily by containment measures imposed through
lockdowns, community quarantines, temporary business and school closures, necessitating
social protection for the vulnerable population and measures to further assist SMEs and other
affected firms. Tourism is a particularly important sector for Southeast Asia. Early on in the
crisis, the Chinese government imposed a group travel ban on its citizens. This had an
immediate economic impact as the Chinese account for 17% of all tourists. In 2018, more than a
quarter of the tourists in Thailand (almost 28%) and a third to Cambodia (almost 33%) were
Chinese for example. The economic impact on the tourism sector in Southeast Asia deepened
as the virus spread globally to other countries and regions. Travel restrictions imposed by some
Southeast Asian countries on travel to and from Europe and North America further cut into their
tourism trade.
Economic downturn Governments of the ASEAN Member States imposed stringent
domestic containment measures. The restriction of large-scale events, restaurants
and leisure, as well as school closures and lockdowns are having a negative impact
on economic activities. These lockdown measures, although to a different scale and
scope, imposed by Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, are slowing down or
even stopping economic activities in certain sectors, having a ripple effect to others.
Social Impacts The economic shocks will have more medium-term impacts on poverty and
welfare, especially among the more vulnerable in society and those who work in the informal
economy. The public health
system is increasingly struggling to cope with growing demand, and the medical sector is
overstretched, calling for targeted policy responses. A number of countries in the region have
implemented a variety of measures, such as cash delivery to medical personnel; World Bank
loans to purchase of medical equipment; or salary increases for medical personnel and the
purchase of equipment.
Providing and reinforcing income support for workers facing job loss is more difficult in
developing and emerging economies, in part because of the frequency of informal employment.
One option is to provide emergency regularization or to allow informal workers to register for
emergency social assistance. Thailand, for example, has introduced a monthly allowance worth
THB 5000 (USD 150), available for at least three months from April to June 2020, for workers
not covered by social insurance as long as they register with one of three states-owned banks
or online. Another option is to provide cash and/or in-kind transfers to vulnerable groups but not
specifically tied to job loss.
Socially vulnerable groups in the ASEAN Member States are affected both directly by
the Covid-19 infection as well as by the containment measures taken by governments.
The share of informal sector in the region’s employment varies from 10% up to
70%. This segment of population is likely to be affected by their lower access to social
security, including healthcare, which would put them at a higher risk to the initial
infection itself, but also through the retransmission of the virus within this group that
tends to live in a more constrained physical environment. The informal sector will also
be affected by the containment measures taken by governments. For instance,
lockdown measures would place them in a more vulnerable position with no income,
and no savings to stock-up on subsistence goods, and no access to social safety net
designed to compensate for lost income. Within the informal sector, the presence of
migrant workers poses another challenge, as the lockdown measures and stricter
transport and border controls would make it difficult for them to repatriate.

Women also face particular challenges as they are at the core of the Covid-19 response. The
pandemic risks curtailing income generation opportunities for women, as they tend to be more
frequently employed in the informal sector (and are thus more vulnerable to layoff and less likely
to be eligible for support measures and various social security arrangements) and represent a
high share amongst migrant workers and hence are exposed to the closure of borders. Women
have also tended to take on a greater share of household and childcare duties, and this
becomes more relevant as schools close.
COVID-19 responses undertaken by individual member countries of ASEAN have been
tremendously diverse and have ranged from strict lockdown conditions in the highly regulated
city-state of Singapore to ‘business as usual’, especially in rural areas of developing countries
with large informal economies such as Laos and Myanmar. Yet ASEAN member countries also
have a long history of cross-border cooperation, forged through trade regionalization and
economic integration. In the health sector, ASEAN cooperation has been infused into region-
wide frameworks including the ASEAN Political-Security Community (APC), ASEAN Economic
Community (AEC) and ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC). Through these social-
cultural pillars, ASEAN has developed a basic platform for health security cooperation since
1980, as shown, for instance, through ASEAN-level responses to prior pandemics including
SARS, H1N1 and MERS-CoV.

Currently, the official ASEAN health cooperation platform that includes its pandemic response
planning regime is governed by the ASCC Pillar entitled “A Healthy, Caring and Sustainable
ASEAN Community”. This vision of the ASEAN Post-2015 Health Development Agenda was
formulated in 2018 as one of the ASEAN agendas for pandemic preparedness. It is articulated
in the Joint Statement of 5th ASEAN Plus Three Health Ministers Meeting. ASEAN health sector
efforts to Covid-19 With the impacts of Covid-19 threatening human health and social security
across the region, ASEAN as a regional body has a potentially important role to play in
coordinating the responses of member states to contain the spread of the virus and to build
awareness of the importance of treating Covid-19 as a transboundary problem that cannot be
resolved by individual sectors, jurisdictions or groups of experts and requires collective forms of
policy redress.